When Bare Breasts Are Decent

The Hays Office, and the Hollywood Production Code it used to administer, are institutions as quaint and dated as Busby Berkeley musicals and brown-and-white shoes. Yet their demise and the present attempt to replace them tell a good deal about American show business--and therefore about American mores.

The code was designed in 1930 to keep actors and actresses out of bed--on the screen. It seemed like a good idea at the time, for movies were as sex-conscious as the films coming out of Sweden today. But the production code launched an era of hypocritical leer; moviemakers often did their vulgar and ingenious best to be as provocative as possible, without violating the code's letter.

Despite the rule against "suggestive posture," Paul Lukas, with nimble hand, and Sally Blane, with ample thigh, cavorted in 1933's Grand Slam. Despite strictures against double-entendre, Mae West scarcely needed to be more direct than when she observed, "I like a man who takes his time." Later, the code's prohibition against "lustful embraces" did not stop Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr from wrestling all over a Hawaii beach in From Here to Eternity. And scarcely anybody paid any attention to the taboo against "explicit treatment of adultery."

Ratifying the Changes. The code was in tatters by 1953, when the Motion Picture Producers Association refused to grant its seal of approval to Otto Preminger's The Moon Is Blue, because it dealt frivolously with seduction. Preminger thumbed his nose and distributed the picture anyway, benefiting from reams of publicity about the dialogue, which actually dared to use the word virgin.

The code came to be totally ignored in the era when European films depicted what comes naturally (and occasionally, unnaturally), and when books gained almost complete literary license. But nobody in the movie industry thought it was worth the bother to bury the dead code until Lyndon Johnson's former aide Jack Valenti became president of the M.P.A.A. last May. Valenti, who had been a Texas public relations man before he went to work for L.B.J., was determined to give Hollywood a new image (TIME, Sept. 2). Last week, after four months of work with the M.P.A.A. board, Valenti presented a new code that he hoped would "expand creative film making without tolerating license."

The new code will tolerate a great deal, if not everything. In effect, it merely ratifies the changes that have taken place in American sensibilities. The old puritanical tone is virtually gone. The first principle of the old code stated that "no picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it." The new code leads off with the suggestion that movies should "keep in closer harmony with the mores, the culture, the moral sense and the expectation of our society."

Parental Guide. A classification system will enable the M.P.A.A. to label certain films as "Suggested for Mature Audiences." Even this is not mandatory; it is a "request" to theater owners and a caveat to customers. Valenti feels that it is up to grownups to decide which pictures they want their children to see; the warning label will be mainly a guide for parents.

. Old taboos are either eliminated or modified. Gone in the era of Billy Wilder is the statement that seduction is never "acceptable as a subject matter for comedy." Instead of "profanity is forbidden," the code specifies that "undue profanity should not be permitted." Where once the code banned nudity altogether, it now forbids "indecent or undue exposure." When a reporter asked Valenti if "bare breasts could be deemed indecent in one film and decent in another," Valenti emphatically replied, "Yes."

There is no guarantee that movies will now be better than ever, but it is a safe guess that they will be sexier than ever--in which case Hollywood may have something to export to Sweden.

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